"The hair's not important," Roger said frowningly. "I'd considered cutting it, anyway. As a... gift. But the time was never right."
Armand Pahner had cordially detested Roger's hair from first meeting. But the funeral had been a hurried affair in the midst of the chaos of trying to keep the ship spaceworthy and simultaneously clear the planet of any sign the Bronze Barbarians had ever been there.
"But this way you can keep it." Eleanora kept her own tone light. "And if you didn't, how would we know it was you? At any rate, the body-mod problem is solved. And the ship has other assets. It's too bad we can't take it deep into Imperial space."
"No way," Kosutic said, shaking her head sharply. "One good look at it by any reasonably competent customs officer, even if we could get it patched up, and he's going to know it's not just some tramp freighter."
"So we'll have to dump it—trade it, rather—with someone we can be sure won't be telling the Empire what they traded for."
"Pirates?" Roger grimaced and glanced quickly at Despreaux. "I'd hate to support those scum in any way. And I wouldn't trust them a centimeter."
"Again, considered and rejected," Eleanora replied. "For both of those reasons. And also because we're going to need a considerable amount of help pirates simply aren't going to be able to provide."
"So who?"
"Special Agent Jin now has the floor," the chief of staff said, rather than responding directly herself.
"I've completed an analysis of the information that wasn't wiped from the ship's computers," Jin said, tapping his own pad. "We're not the only group the Saints have been messing with."
"I'd think not," Roger snorted. "They're a pest."
"This ship, in particular," Jin continued, "has been inserting agents, and some covert action teams, into Alphane territory."
"Aha." Roger's eyes narrowed.
"Into whose territory?" Krindi asked in Mardukan. Because the humans' personal computer implants could automatically translate, the meeting had been speaking the Diaspran dialect of Mardukan with which all the locals were familiar. "Sorry," the infantryman continued, "but I've been getting up to speed on most of your human terms, and this is a new one."
"The Alphanes are the only nonhuman interstellar polity with which we have contact," Eleanora said, descending into lecture mode. "Or, rather, the only one which isn't predominately human. The Alphane Alliance consists of twelve planets, with the population about evenly split between humans, Altharis, and Phaenurs.
"The Phaenurs are lizardlike creatures—they look something like atul, but with only four legs and two arms, and they're scaly, like the flar-ta. They're also empaths—which means they can read emotions—and, among themselves, they're functional telepaths. Very shrewd bargainers, since it's virtually impossible to lie to them.
"The Altharis are a warrior race that looks somewhat like large... Well, you don't have the referent, but they look like big koala bears. Very stoic and honorable. Females make up the bulk of their warriors, while males tend to be their engineers and workers. I've dealt with the Alphanes before, and the combination is... difficult. You have to lay all your cards on the table, because the Phaenurs can tell if you're lying, and the Altharis lose all respect for you if you do."
"But the critical point, for our purposes, is that we have information the Alphanes need," Jin continued, picking up the thread once more. "They need to know both the extent of Saint penetration—which they're going to be somewhat surprised about, I suspect—and the true nature of what's going on in the Empire."
"Even if they do need to know that, and even if we tell them, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to help us," Roger pointed out.
"No," Eleanora agreed with a frown. "But they can, and there are reasons they may. I won't say they will, but it's our best hope."
"And do you have any suggestions about how we're going to penetrate the Empire?" Roger asked. "Assuming we can convince the Alphanes to help us, that is?"
"Yes," Eleanora said, then shrugged. "It's not my idea, but I think it's a good one. I didn't at first, but it makes more sense than anything else we've come up with. Julian?"
Roger looked at the noncom, and Julian grinned.
"Restaurants," he said.
"What?" Roger frowned blankly.
"Kostas, may he rest in peace, gave me the idea."
"What does Kostas have to do with it?" Roger demanded, almost angrily. The bitter wound of the valet's death had yet to fully heal.
"It was those incredible meals he'd summon up out of nothing but swamp water and day-old atul," Julian replied with another smile, this one of sad fondness and memory. "Man, I still can't believe some of those recipes he came up with! I was thinking about them, and it suddenly occurred to me that Old Earth is always looking for the 'new' thing. Restaurants spring up with some new, out-of-this-world—literally!—food all the time. It's going to require one helluva lot of funding, but that's going to be a problem for anything we do. So, what we do, is we come to Imperial City with a chain of the newest, most you've-got-to-try-this-new-place, most brassy possible restaurants serving 'authentic Mardukan food.'"
"You've wanted to do this your whole life," Roger said, wonderingly. "Haven't you?"
"No, listen," Julian said earnestly. "We don't just bring Mardukans and Mardukan food. We bring the whole schmeer. Atul in cages. Flar-ta. Basik. Tanks of coll fish. Hell, bring Patty! We throw a grand opening for the new restaurant in Imperial City that's the talk of the whole planet. A parade of civan riders and the Diasprans bearing platters of atul and basik on beds of barleyrice. Rastar chopping the meat off the bone right there in the restaurant for everyone to watch. Impossible to miss."
"The purloined letter approach," Kosutic said. "Don't hide it, flaunt it. They're looking for Prince Roger to come sneaking in? Heaven with that! We'll come in blowing trumpets."
"And do you know how good a restaurant is for having meetings?" Julian asked. "Who thinks about a group of former Empress' Own having one of their get-togethers in the newest, hottest restaurant on the face of the planet?"
"And we've got the whole Basik's Own right there in the heart of the capital," Roger said, almost wonderingly.
"Bingo," Julian agreed with a chuckle.
"Just one problem," Roger noted, with another of those quick, one-side-of-the-face smiles. "They're all lousy cooks."
"It's haute cuisine," Julian said. "Who can tell the difference? Besides, we can scrounge up cooks on the planet. Ones that are either loyal to us, or don't know what's going on. Just that they were hired to go to another planet and cook. That place in K'Vaern's Cove, the one down by the water—you know, the one Tor Flain's parents own. That's a whole family of expert cooks. Ones we can trust, come to think of it. And how many humans speak Mardukan? It was only your toot and Eleanora's that let us get by at first. Then there's Harvard."
"Harvard?" Roger asked.
"Yeah, Harvard. If you trust him," Julian said seriously.
Roger thought about that for a long time. They'd discovered Harvard Mansul, a reporter for the Imperial Astrographic Society in a cell in a Krath fortress the Marines had captured. He'd been almost pathetically grateful to be rescued, and to have his prized Zuiko tri-cam returned more or less unharmed. Since then, he'd been attached to Roger like a limpet. Not for safety, but because, as he'd frankly admitted, it was the story of all time. Marooned prince battles neobarbarians and saves the Empire... assuming, of course, that any of them survived.